Sports

DCB athletic director Johnson to resign effective June 30

By Matthew Semisch

05/13/2014

The Dakota College at Bottineau athletic department will soon find itself under new - and yet possibly familiar - management.

Scott Johnson, the Lumberjacks’ athletic director for the last 11 years after having served as an assistant AD for four, is set to step down from his post effective June 30. He will, however, retain his position as a professor of mathematics at the college.

Johnson is a Bottineau native and DCB graduate himself who is in his 15th year working at his hometown school. Regarding his resignation from the AD role, though, he said it’s simply a matter of time and him not having enough of it.

“It’s just because of time,” Johnson said. “It’s the time commitments and game coverage, and when you teach math full time and do the AD job, it’s really two full-time jobs in one.

“It’s just become too much for me. It’s maybe also time for new leadership, too, though.

A successor has not yet been announced. That said, there are four in-house candidates hoping to take over where Johnson will leave off come the end of next month.

Two of the hopefuls already employed by DCB are head coaches at the school.

Cory Fehringer currently wears two hats within the DCB athletic department. Fehringer serves both as the school’s volleyball head coach as well as the leader of the Lumberjacks’ men’s basketball team.

Travis Rybchinski is another of the perhaps higher-profile candidates vying for Johnson’s current position within the athletic department. Rybchinski is the head coach of DCB’s hockey team.

Dano Fagerlund, DCB’s assistant athletic director is also in the running. On top of his assistant AD role, Fagerlund also serves as an assistant coach with the Lumberjacks’ football and men’s basketball programs.

The fourth in-house candidate is Dan Davis. Davis currently works as an assistant coach for the Lumberjacks’ football team and also serves as the school’s director of student affairs.

Johnson said that, on top of a new AD being hired, the school will also hire a new volleyball and softball coach.

As for the AD position, Johnson said he has forewarned the candidates vying for the job that it won’t be just that one job that whoever gets hired will be taking on.

“The AD has always been kind of an add-on job here,” Johnson said, “But I think that’s pretty common with smaller schools like this one because you do wear so many hats.

“There’s a lot of components to being in the job, though, that have to do with just the sports teams. With the math, I’m the ranking math instructor, too, and our other one was only just hired last year.”

DCB has put together a committee of five officials to interview candidates for the AD job before recommending a finalist.

Johnson is not on that committee, but he has relayed related input to Dr. Ken Grosz, the dean of the college.

The athletic program at DCB has expanded considerably under Johnson’s watch. In Johnson’s time at the helm he helped to create Lumberjacks football and Ladyjacks softball programs that first hit the fields of play in 2008, and this season’s DCB women’s basketball team became the college’s first women’s sports team to qualify for an NJCAA national tournament.
DCB’s softball team was knocking at the door this spring, too.

Led by head coach Mike Getzloff, the Ladyjacks ended their 2014 season with a 23-9 record and won an NJCAA sub-regional tournament it hosted before bowing out last weekend in the NJCAA Region XIII championships in Rochester, Minn.

The number of people working as part of the college’s athletic department’s staff has gone up, too.

“When I first started, we had our AD and then me as our associate AD,” Johnson said. “Now, there’s me as the AD and an assistant under me, and we also have a game manager, so it’s changed dramatically there.

“Our sports have gone up from five to seven, too and our athlete enrollment has more than doubled, so there’s been some really big changes all around with our department since I started in the associate’s job.”

The college’s athlete enrollment has indeed become much larger since Johnson first became the head AD. The school’s athletes are known for their loud and vocal sport of their classmates on other DCB teams, too, and that’s something Johnson takes pride in.

“Everyone from every sport tries to support the others, and that’s what we promote here,” Johnson said.

“We really are a small campus, and we don’t have a lot of things bigger campuses do, but we take a lot of pride in our work ethic and also the friendships the students leave here with, because they’re all forging these with each other that will last the rest of their lives.”

That’s been particularly noticeable in the school’s dorms, and Johnson said they’re helping with a lot of the services and opportunities DCB provides.

“I would say that, in our dorms, at least 60 percent of those students are athletes, if not more,” Johnson said.

“And they’re paying for a lot of functions the school offers.

“We’ve got a myriad of sports to the level where football is non-scholarship, there’s no true division for hockey in the NJCAA, and the rest of our sports except for softball are Division II. That means there’s a lot of different types of components we have in place here.”

That non-scholarship football team is moving to a new conference starting this fall. For football only, the Lumberjacks are joining soon-to-be 11-team Minnesota College Athletic Conference (MCAC).

DCB will be part of the MCAC’s north division, joining Minnesota schools Mesabi Range, Vermilion, Itasca, Fond du Lac and Central Lakes. Minnesota West, Ridgewater, North Dakota State College of Science, Minnesota State-Fergus Falls and Rochester Community and Technical College will make up the league’s south division.

“Football’s joining the Minnesota conference, and that’s just huge for us. We’d been playing independent football, but this is going to give us a set schedule and NJCAA Division III competition week-in and week-out, and that’s a real positive.”

The Lumberjacks’ hockey program knows all too well the issues that comes with schedule-making when a team’s running as an independent outside of a conference. DCB’s hockey team largely plays an independent schedule as there’s no true league for the sport inside the NJCAA.

“It’s hard to play an independent schedule in any sport,” Johnson said. “When you’re doing that, it becomes a thing where you’re at the mercy of whoever decides they’ll play you.”

The future for DCB athletics looks bright, too, though, and planned improvements to facilities are set to help.

The biggest planned facility improvement will be to the Woodshed, the college’s multipurpose arena inside Thatcher Hall.

The school plans to replace the Woodshed’s court and place on top of it new decals that will take up the space where largely nondescript decals currently sit atop the present court.

Other facility and personnel improvements have already been made during Johnson’s tenure as the school’s AD. DCB has teamed up with the Trinity Health system to bring on board a full-time athletic trainer for the Lumberjacks and Ladyjacks, and that appointment alone shook things up noticeably and, ultimately, for the better.

“With more teams have come that many more games,” Johnson said, “And with our facilities, a lot’s changed there, too.

“Our weight room now is where our trainer’s room was at, and we picked up a full-time trainer a few years ago, and that’s been a big plus. We’ve contracted with Trinity, and that’s huge, because before you’d be at a game and worrying about the immediate term if someone gets hurt.”

Johnson will stay on at his alma mater in his professorial role, and he’s made it clear that he’ll be available to lend advice to whoever takes in his stead.

“I told some of our staff that I can still do whatever’s going to be needed,” Johnson said, “Whether that involves running the clock or keeping up the scorebook, whatever they need.

“I’ve done what seems like it all in this department, and I’m happy to know I’m leaving the athletic department in a really good place. Recruiting has gone well, our coaching staffs are great, and there’s still so much room for growth.

“You see that with our women’s basketball team being our first women’s team to go to our national tournament, and the softball team’s knocking on the door, too. There’s always growing pains, but we’ve always weathered those storms pretty well and have gotten and will continue to get the Dakota College name out there more, and hopefully the next AD will do that.”

What Johnson said he’s most proud of about his time as DCB’s AD is that the athletic department has been able to help provide so many services and life lessons to its student-athletes.

“This college has done a lot for a lot of our student-athletes,” Johnson said, “With the student part being the most important part of it because, if you’re going to end up going up to a four-year school after this, you’re going to have to be a student first and foremost.

“I don’t care how good you are on the field of play, because if you can’t meet their academic requirements, you’re not going to be able to play, and these kids know that’s a huge deal.”

Knowing he’s had a role to play in that has made the AD position so enjoyable for Johnson, and he is confident that will also ring true for his successor.

“Whoever takes my place will have fun with it,” Johnson said, “Because I know it’s been a good run for me.”